Disordered Design: The Chaos Theory Embodied in Furniture

By Delana

The connection between designer and object is usually quite intimate, with the designer pouring him- or herself into every last piece from start to finish. Such is not the case with Itay Ohaly‘s experiment in product design. The designer embraced chaos to challenge this conventional view of creation in his Design & Chaos project.

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The project involved Itay Ohaly and several friends collaborating to create a series of desks and a series of jugs. For each object created, each participant went into the collaboration more or less blindly. They were not told what the finished project would be – or even what the next step in the design process would be after theirs.

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Each person performed one simple action, such as creating three two-dimensional objects or adding cylinders to the evolving structure. Only Ohaly knew what the finished product would be. The experiments in which he performed more of the steps in the process himself reflect this, as they wound up looking vaguely more recognizable in the end.

According to Ohaly, the project is an example of just how chaotic the entire world around us is. The lesson here, he says, is that we should stop fighting against the chaos and learn to embrace it in some type of positive way.